Monday, November 07, 2005

ISLAMIC PROPAGANDA IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS

The Saudis are at it again, and this time America's school children are the victims. It's no secret that the princes in Riyadh fund anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic propaganda in mosques and madrassas across the globe. But now a yearlong investigation by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency exposes that the oil kingdom's virulent tentacles also stretch into America's public school system.

The JTA says textbooks used in public schools across the country "are highly critical of democratic institutions and forgiving of repressive ones." The books also "praise and sometimes promote Islam, but criticize Judaism and Christianity and are filled with false assertions."

One such book is the "Arab World Studies Notebook." The JTA reports that it suggests that Jews have "undue influence on U.S. foreign policy" and that its country section omits any information on Israel and only refers to "Palestine." The book writes that the Koran "synthe sizes and perfects earlier revelations," namely Jewish and Christian. According to the JTA the two organizations behind the book - the Arab World and Islamic Resources and the Middle East Policy Council - receive funding from Saudi Arabia: AWAIR from the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil company and MPEC directly from Riyadh. According to MPEC's Web site it has "conducted Workshops in 175 different cities in 43 states," which "more than 16,000 educators have attended."

The American Jewish Committee published a study in February criticizing the book and urged "school districts across the nation" to ban it. A spokesman for the AJCommittee, Kenneth Bandler, told The New York Sun that they haven't been able to track whether the book is used in New York City's schools but that "it's possible." The director of communications for the New York City department of education, Stephen Morello, queried by the Sun, said that the department launched an "aggressive effort to find out" whether the book was used in the city's schools. Mr. Morello told the Sun that the book was not found as far as he can tell in the city's schools and that it is "unlikely it is being used."

The department of education has a good record in removing unsuitable influences from its schools and teachers. In February the city's schools chancellor, Joel Klein, barred the head of Columbia University's Middle East Institute, Rashid Khalidi, from lecturing the city's teachers on how to teach the Middle East. Whether other education departments across the country follow New York's lead and investigate whether Saudi propaganda is being taught in their classrooms will be something for the Congress and parents to watch.

Source





SCHOOL EMPLOYMENT AT WILL

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his supporters have managed to get several items on the November 8 California ballot, including the proposal to extend the trial period for government primary and secondary education teachers to five years rather than the current two before they receive tenure. Well, actually, they do not receive “tenure” in the sense of full job security but after two years they can only be let go by meeting various “due process” requirements—e.g., showing they are incompetent or have broken some laws.

Ordinary employment situations rarely involve tenure, even in this restricted fashion. If you hire someone to mow your lawn, clean your home, handle your tax returns, or flip hamburgers at your fast food restaurant, you can simply discontinue the relationship if you want to. You need not demonstrate good reasons for this, although you may get some resistance if you don’t—complaints, a bad reputation as an employer, etc. Or you can negotiate an employment agreement that spells out the conditions under which you may be let go, even conditions under which you may leave. It all depends on what the contract says.

The policy of tenure, to which a great many government educational institutions—as well as quite a few private ones that need to follow suit so as to be able to compete—involves getting substantial job security after a probationary period. The tenure at universities and colleges usually amounts to job security provided the entire institution is experiencing an economic down turn. (In state universities and colleges, of course, this is usually met with raising taxes, thus meeting the economic pressure, although even that can come to an end eventually.) Only if one commits a crime or grossly misbehaves will tenure provide no protection of one’s teaching position. But it usually takes seven years to achieve tenure.

The traditional argument for tenure, especially at state higher education institutions, had been that it will protect professors with controversial ideas from arbitrary treatment from the administration. At elementary and high schools this traditional justification is virtually completely moot. Here the reasoning tends to be that given the low pay of teachers, they will at least receive job security and thus have a pretty good reason to carry on properly, even excel, at their profession.

Problem is that there’s an imbalance involved in teachers receiving tenure, even of the moderate sort that guarantees due process when and if they are to be dismissed. Think about it for a moment—why must the school provide due process when a teacher is let go but the teacher who wants to leave can do so at will? If, in other words, schools are forced by law to show cause for letting a teacher go, why isn’t a teacher required, by law, to show cause for wanting to leave?

When I recently posed this question to some who support the existing tenure system of California’s public elementary and high schools, the question wasn’t even understood. Yet it is plain—if one side in the employment relationship must show cause for discontinuing that relationship, surely it is only fair that the other side should do so as well. Otherwise we have a case of blatant unjust discrimination!

Of course, how the employment relationship should be structured should actually be left to the agreement that employees and employers reach among themselves. That is how adult men and women should comport themselves in a free society. If, then, teachers can negotiate a tenure-like contract, as well as being able to leave anytime they wish, so be it. If not, so be it again.

You may think, well the bargaining situation is quite uneven. School administrators have a lot more clout than teachers, so teachers cannot be expected to negotiate a favorable employment agreement. But this is completely wrong. The institutional clout of school administrators is matched virtually fully by the clout of school teachers—by means of their unions. These unions enjoy even more clout than in justice they should have, given that governments have rules that mandate from employers the very conditions that should be left up to the bargaining process to settle. For example, many unions are authorized, in law, to bargain for employees who are non-members. Non-members of many unions, especially public service unions, are required to pay dues. (This varies some from state to state!)

There is also the injustice that governments have largely eliminated the choice educational customers have, the choice that customers of department, grocery, or shoe stores take for granted. They are, instead, virtual monopolies. So their unions have even more clout than those in the private sector where if a firm is struck, customers can shop at another firm. (Indeed, the whole notion of public service unionization is an anomaly in a free society.)

Alas, in our day certain people have come to take their special, unjust privileges for granted, so much so that even to bring up the issue of this injustice strikes them as bizarre. But that is no excuse for intelligent citizens to let the matter pass.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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